Contact
Operator Barklee Sanders · ESBE Inc
ImproveBayArea is operated by one person. There is no support queue or help desk. Email is the only inbound channel; replies typically arrive within one business day.
For city staff
If you work for any Bay Area city — 311, DPW, MTA, public health, code enforcement, an elected office, anywhere — and you have feedback, improvement ideas, help requests, or any concerns at all, email barkleesanders@esbe.tech with [CITY] in the subject line. There is no wrong question. Topics we explicitly welcome:
- A category routing is wrong → tell us, we change it
- A submission is hitting your team that shouldn't be → we'll filter it
- You want a feature added (deduplication, status callbacks, formatted exports, anything) → say so
- You want to raise a branding or trademark concern → we'll fix or rename
- You want to set up a working session, a demo, a ride-along — yes
- You want us to STOP submitting through your channel — also yes
City escalations get a response within four business hours during weekdays. What we will do: investigate, fix anything that's ours, reply with what we found and what we changed. What we will not do: argue.
For residents
If a report you filed through ImproveBayArea didn't go through, was miscategorized, or never got a city response — you have two paths:
- Resubmit through ImproveBayArea. Open the home page, snap a fresh photo (or reuse the original), and file again. The new case gets a fresh ID and goes back into the dispatch queue. Often the fastest fix when a report just got routed wrong the first time.
- Self-escalate via the records-request process. Every Bay Area city is bound by California's Public Records Act (Gov. Code § 7920.000 et seq.). For SF specifically, file at sanfrancisco.nextrequest.com requesting (a) the case file for your specific case ID, (b) the dispatch + status-change log, and (c) any internal correspondence about the case. Cities have 10 calendar days to respond. This pulls the case out of the autoresponse loop and forces a real human to look at it.
Email us if you'd like help with either path — we can resubmit on your behalf, or draft the records-request letter for you to file. barkleesanders@esbe.tech.
Accessibility issues
ImproveBayArea is built to WCAG 2.2 AA. Accessibility barriers are treated as Sev-1 bugs — fixed before any other feature work. Email barkleesanders@esbe.tech with the page, the device, and what broke.
Security disclosures
See /.well-known/security.txt for the disclosure policy. tl;dr: report responsibly, no public exploitation, we will respond within 48 hours and credit you on fix.
Press & partnerships
Same email, with [PRESS] or [PARTNERSHIP] in the subject line. There is no PR firm in the loop.